The Main Cages Read online

  Then it stopped. The heat of the cobbles shrunk the drops to nothing and only the dust and the smell were left. On the Bench they shook their heads and leaned on their elbows again. They cursed the clouds and scowled at the Porth boat, the Andrew Eliot, which was now pushing in through the Gaps.

  Every year, on the night before the regatta, the Porth Male Voice Choir performed in Polmayne. It was meant as a conciliatory gesture between the two towns but it rarely was. Fifteen men in green jackets trotted up the steps and nodded at the Bench and made their way up to the Freeman Reading Rooms. There they agreed to shed their jackets and sang in white shirts and ties and the audience of visitors joined in the choruses. Six people had left before they finished, faint with heat. Afterwards the men took their green jackets and made their way to the Fountain Inn.

  Since early evening, a large crowd had been gathering outside the Fountain, escaping the heat of the tap room for the open air. Those who wished to talk found they had to raise their voices to make themselves heard, and what with the heat and the talking they returned more often to the tap room, and each time they did they managed to talk even louder.

  Only the Porth singers did not talk. They stood in a circle, glasses in hand, and every so often one of them would start singing and then the others would join in.

  Up at the Golden Sands Hotel the reception was over. It was almost dark by the time Jimmy and Tacker Garrett saw off the last of the guests and brought the Golden Sands back to her moorings. When they reached the Fountain Inn, Tacker added his voice to the Porth singers. Those who didn’t want to sing but wanted to talk found that they had to raise their voices even higher. And from the Fountain Inn the talking and singing spilled out of the alley and down to the quays. In the breathless air, it joined the talk of those on the front and spread back into the side-alleys and up over the net lofts and into the lanes to merge with the voices of those who were talking inside. As night drew its curtains across the day it seemed as if the whole town was one vast room and everyone in it was a part of the same inescapable hubbub. No one slept. Those men with the Reeds turned this way and that in bed, rising to open the window because of the heat, then rising again to close it because of the noise.

  A host of long-buried resentments came to the surface that Friday evening. For months Mr Hicks had watched the numbers in the Antalya restaurant fall away, losing custom to the new hotel. His dining room was almost empty. His chef was playing cards with the kitchen staff. When a couple of new guests told him that they too would be ‘trying out the Golden Sands’s cooking’, he collected their bags and threw them onto the street. ‘You want to dine at the Golden Sands, you can bloody well stay there!’

  The Town Quay was full of people walking up and down. Having walked up and down, many of them leaned on the wall. Toper Walsh was watching a very fat boy eating a cold sausage.

  ‘Christ, what they children get fed now’ days! They never bloody stop eating.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he eat a sausage?’

  ‘You never had a sausage, Tope?’ asked Tick-Tock Harris.

  ‘Course I ’ad a sausage! Course I have. Anyway, Tick, you ain’t even from ’ere.’

  In Rope Walk Maggie Treneer discovered from Croyden that his piece had become a desert. ‘How in the name of God do you expect to feed us this winter?’

  Having no answer, Croyden took his brown beret and left the house for the Fountain. There he found his brother Charlie and Double and Edwin Pentreath and the Tylers and they stood in a circle. Double said he was going up to the new reservoir at Pennance in the morning. There was water there, he said, and Ivor Dawkins had lent them his water-cart but they needed hands to help. They all told him they would go and then Charlie said, ‘I tell ’ee, all this talk of water’s making me thirsty.’ And he rejoined the crowd queuing in the tap room.

  Up at the Crates, Old Mrs Treneer and the Moyles and a few others were standing outside the new houses when a blood-coloured glow appeared behind Pendhu. They had not even noticed that the thunderclouds had gone and now here was the moon, fat and pitted beside the church tower. ‘What a beauty!’ cooed Mrs Moyle.

  ‘A peach!’ said Mrs Treneer.

  Inside, in the middle of his empty room, Tommy Treneer sat rocking on his stool. He was cursing the stiletto of light which had cut through the gap in the curtains. ‘Gone to Gooth,’ they all said of Tommy in the town, but because he never went out he had no idea. He scratched his bare arm and the flakes of dried skin drifted down in the moonlight and he muttered about ‘damn labbetts and larrs’.

  By eleven the day’s heat had gone. In the fields of Pendhu the corn shocks stretched fingers of moon-shadow across the stubble. When the Fountain Inn closed, the singing continued. Those in the alley followed the green jackets of the Porth choir, still singing, down to the Town Quay where the Andrew Eliot was being brought into the steps. The singing turned to jostling as they stood on the quay and the Garretts glared at the choir and for the first time the Porth men stopped singing and hurried down the steps to the Andrew Eliot. As she backed out through the Gaps and slid onto the rug of silvery light in the bay, the singing resumed. It rose in pitch until the taunt in it was audible not only to those still on the quays but to all those who lay unsleeping in their beds, trying to shut out the remaining murmur of the streets and the rose-red light of that harvest moon.

  ‘Fare-well Polmayne – Fare-well, fa-are-arewell …’

  3

  Saturday, 29 August 1936

  CHAPTER 23

  Shortly before dawn, the first pale light brushed Polmayne’s quays. For some time everything was still. The boats lay to the tide. The front was empty. Beyond the bay, beyond Pendhu, the grey of the sea was one with the grey of the sky.

  Even in this deadest of dawn seas, the Main Cages picked out a swell where there appeared to be none. It came in from the east, each wave mounting as it approached the first of the rocks, the Curate. The crest steepened and began to curl, and just before it broke the water was sucked away from around the rock and it was exposed, a brief black island hung with strands of draining white. Then the wave fell, swamping the Curate, and it was rolling on to Maenmor and its jagged satellites. There too it rose and a shadow grew beneath its crest and its waters spread high up the rock and it was sluicing through the gap before dropping again beyond Maenmor and disappearing into the flat grey waters to the west of Pendhu.

  As the sun rose, it took the stars one by one. It splashed orange on the underside of each cloud and tortoiseshelled the entire eastern sky. Within an hour the last of the clouds had gone and along Polmayne’s whitewashed front the first of the day’s warmth began to glow from the walls.

  Up over Pendhu hill came Captain Williams. He was whistling a nameless tune. He unlocked the door of the watch hut, took off his cap and put it on the table. He scratched his beard. Unlatching the window, he pushed open the louvres and blinked in the sudden glare. The sea below was as bright as glass. He swung the telescope along the horizon but could take it no further east than 120 degrees because of the sun. From his frail he took a cold lamb cutlet and unwrapped it from its greaseproof paper. He felt tired.

  At a quarter to eight Captain Maddocks telephoned the hut.

  ‘Morning!’ said Williams.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Millpond!’

  ‘Harry Flatters. All set for this afternoon?’

  ‘All set.’

  For the past two years Captain Maddocks had been a starter at Porth regatta. His deputies assisted him, and the agreement was that if the weather looked fine he handed over responsibility to the auxiliary watch huts.

  ‘Should be quiet,’ said Maddocks.

  Captain Williams put down the receiver and swung the telescope again. There was less glare now and the early haze had gone. Just south of east he could see a dark line on the horizon. Within half an hour it had spread, criss-crossing the water with paler channels like a flood plain. When it reached the shore, the breeze pushed up the cliff an
d in through the open window of the hut. Captain Williams closed his eyes and let it blow on his face.

  He woke with a start. Far to the south-east, the first white-caps had begun to flicker. His lamb cutlet remained uneaten; he was not hungry. He wrapped it up, put it away and prepared himself for a long day of duty.

  Dawn at Ferryman’s and the water stood motionless in the river. The world was mirrored in its surface – the pines hung down from the hill and beneath them was the pale-blue sky and a scattering of early-morning clouds. A heron appeared wide-winged in the trees and rose to meet itself on the foreshore.

  Jack had woken early. He stepped outside and stood barefoot on the shingle bar. It was cold. Summer was coming to an end. The pilchards were almost over and then there was the dog-fishing. He hated the dogging – the days getting shorter and that snaggy line and the relentless rhythm of the tides. But now it looked different. Everything looked different. She was staying. They had talked late last night and she said, ‘What is there for me back in London?’ She told him she wanted to remain here and paint and Jack offered to build her a work-bench and bring her firewood and prepare the house for the autumn.

  He stepped into the shallows. He turned and looked at the window under the eaves but could not see her. Upriver, skidding across the surface of the water, came the first ripples of an easterly breeze.

  ‘Easterly, Jim, ’ee’s gone easterly!’

  Jimmy Garrett lay on his bed, one arm across his face. Sunlight filled the window. Tacker stood in the doorway. ‘Do’s go?’

  There was a slight movement around Jimmy’s mouth as he tried to moisten his lips. He reached out for the empty cup on the floor and Tacker took it and filled it with water from the bussa. Jimmy sat up and reached for his block of tobacco. He nodded.

  Tacker carried the newly-repainted board out to the Town Quay. There he lashed it to the railings with coir twine. At the top of the board was painted:

  PLEASANT DAY EXCURSIONS

  PER

  FAST AND COMMODIOUS MOTOR LAUNCH

  GOLDEN SANDS!

  Where ‘GOLDEN SANDS!’ was written, you could make out beneath it the traces of ‘POLMAYNE QUEEN!’. Below the lettering was a square of blackboard, where Tacker slowly chalked up the day’s itinerary:

  Saturday – Porth Regatta. All the fun of the fare!

  Depart Town Quay 12.30 promt

  ‘Got a “p” in it!’ Tick-Tock was sitting with a couple of others on Parliament Bench.

  ‘What has?’

  ‘Prompt.’

  ‘I put a bloody “p” in it.’

  ‘Another one, Tack!’

  They were sending him up. He knew they were just sending him up. He pitched the chalk at them but it bounced off the top of the wall and fell into the sea. He then headed round towards the East Quay and his boat.

  ‘Hooligan!’

  ‘Wouldn’t catch me going Porth,’ said Toper.

  ‘Your mother was born Porth, wan’t her, Tope?’

  ‘Don’t mean I have to go there.’

  Croyden woke to the smell of fish. All around him were maunds and line and everything smelt of fish. When he returned to Rope Walk the night before, he found Maggie had slipped the bolts. He did not remember coming down to the net loft, but here he was, cheek pressed against a tarpaulin. Raising himself, he licked his lips, but his mouth was dry. He made his way home to Rope Walk.

  Hannah and Betty were playing outside. Each of them grabbed one of his arms.

  ‘Father, Father! Look!’

  On the floor inside sat a young herring gull. It had the muddy-brown feathers of that year’s hatch and moved hardly at all. A trail of creamy excrement was spattered across the slate flags.

  ‘It’s ill, Father! We found it!’

  Croyden sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Where’s your mother to?’

  ‘Town.’

  ‘Fetch’s a can.’

  Hannah brought a Charbon tin and Croyden jabbed a marlin-spike into the top and it was salmon. He handed it back. ‘Another.’

  That one was peaches and he drank down the syrup, then widened the hole to get at the fruit. By his feet Betty was prodding the young gull with a fork. ‘What’s it got, Father? Will it die?’

  ‘There any milk?’

  ‘No milk,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Water, then.’

  She put a saucer on the floor and poured a little water into it from the bussa. The bird started to drink. When the saucer was empty, it looked around, then dropped its head and let out a barely audible mew.

  ‘Look, Father! It’s getting better.’

  She filled the saucer again. The bird carried on drinking.

  They watched it hop out through the door, sit for a while in the sun, then spread its wings and fly away.

  ‘Poor bastard’s only thirsty,’ said Croyden. He called for another can, and they brought two more before he found one with peaches inside.

  Shortly before eight, Coxswain Tyler headed up past the Golden Sands Hotel towards the lifeboat station. He leaned back to slide open the first of the double doors and there was the Kenneth Lee, her blue bows shining in the early sun.

  The boat’s rudder lay beside her on two trestles. Flattening his palm, Tyler ran it over the primed and undercoated surface and could not feel the join. On Thursday evening they had struck the back wall coming in from exercise, and he had scarfed in a new piece of timber that night. Now from the store he fetched paint pots and brushes and stroked on the first coat of gloss. He then climbed on board, took out each of the plugs and checked the spark. Having fired up the engine, he telephoned the Secretary: ‘Be up Pennance till later,’ he said. ‘Collecting water. Brad’s on call.’

  Outside on the bank, he squinted up the flagpole and hoisted the RNLI ensign. The breeze picked it up at once and he looked out beyond Pendhu and saw that a swell was already running. It was after nine by the time he left the station and went up to Rope Walk to find Croyden.

  At about the same time, Anna and Jack were leaving Ferryman’s. Anna had her sky-blue headscarf round her neck and she was wearing a jacket of pale orange linen, sitting in the stern of the dinghy and talking about her planned studio.

  ‘I don’t like an easel, Jack. I need something about this angle’ – she raised her forearm about thirty degrees. ‘On a table … and storage, lots of storage for brushes and paints.’

  ‘We’ll have a look in my net loft.’

  When they reached the quays, Jack dropped her off on the steps and sculled out again and threw the anchor astern. Parliament Bench watched the two of them as they passed.

  It was dark in the loft and the air was thick with the smell of rope and cutch and fish. Jack pushed open the front hatch and the sun came flooding in.

  ‘Now!’ he clapped his hands and stepped over the warps and buoys to the back. It surprised even him to see what he had accumulated over the past year or so: crates of rocks, shells, egg-like pebbles, countless old rowlocks and shackles and cleats, wreck-wood, a broken enamel tea-tray, one of a pair of Scotch hands. He held up a canvas drogue and pinched the bottom. ‘What about this – for brushes?’

  ‘Perfect!’ Anna leaned forward to catch it. She put it in a maund. There it was joined by part of an old medical chest – for painting outside – a frail, a piece of trammel net and, propped against the basket’s side, to be used as a painting board, the recently-replaced forehatch from the Maria V.

  As Jack dug deeper into the shadows, Anna told him what she had done so far with Whaler’s sea-chest. ‘I have painted the sides – the harbour and white birds here, other things here, also some people. Also your three boats – the Maria V, little dinghy and the big lifeboat. And birds too, with fishes and lobster. I have cleaned the top and it is much better, but, you know, this animal, maybe it is a dog of some kind –’

  ‘Jack!’ A shout came up from the street below. He leaned out through the hatch and there were Croyden and Tyler.

  ‘There’s water up Pennance!’ call
ed Croyden. ‘We got a horse and tank. If you was free –’

  ‘Everyone else is crewing over Porth or down with the bloody Reeds,’ added Tyler.

  Jack stepped back into the loft, and Anna said, ‘Of course you must go. We can do this later. We have lots of time.’

  All morning the sun climbed higher into a cloudless sky. The wind rose with it and by eleven the bay was a stippled silvery blue. Side by side, Red and Joseph Stephens walked out along the Town Quay. They were wearing their racing guernseys; on Red’s chest was ‘Grace’ and on Joe’s was ‘Charity’.

  ‘Look who it is!’ shouted Toper Walsh. ‘The bloody angels.’

  Off up Porth then?’

  ‘Yachtin’ for the gentry, is ’ee?’ taunted Red Treneer.

  They ignored them. They carried on to the end of the quay where the Petrel skippers were standing in a group, watching the bay.

  ‘Porth’s in the lee of it –’

  ‘We’ll have it on the nose going round –’

  ‘We can still get inside the Cages on the flood –’

  ‘It’ll be wind against tide –’

  ‘It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’ Ralph Cameron checked his watch. ‘But we must leave now.’

  They each gathered their crew. Joe Stephens went with the Dane Soren, Red with Lawrence Rose. Cameron had persuaded Charlie Treneer to join him with an offer of a guinea bonus for a win. Half an hour later, with a roll each in their mainsails and the wind astern, the six Petrels sailed out of Polmayne Bay. They hardened their sheets around Pendhu Point and reached open water already hard-pressed. From the coastguard hut Captain Williams watched them go, watched the progress of the icing-white sails against the blue sea. By the time the Petrels reached Porth, the wind had dropped. They were in the lee of Kidda Head and there was little sea to speak of. A couple of punts put out from the quay and as the skippers were rowed ashore Lawrence Rose said, ‘Not a bad breeze out there.’